Providing a glimpse into what could be the future of U.S. manned space flight, Hawthorne-based SpaceX on Thursday unveiled its first space capsule capable of ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

The long-awaited presentation by Elon Musk, SpaceX’s billionaire CEO and founder of Tesla Motors, showcased the 12-year-old company’s engineering prowess with the flair of an Apple product release party.

Starry-eyed engineers cheered and flashed their smartphone cameras inside SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory as Musk took the stage in a crushed velvet blazer and a boy-band mic strapped to his ear.

After a 10-second countdown, a curtain dropped behind Musk to reveal the gumdrop-shaped Dragon V2, a seven-passenger capsule that could begin shuttling astronauts to the ISS as early as 2017.

“You’ll be able to land anywhere on Earth with the accuracy of a helicopter,” Musk told the sea of mostly 20-somethings who craned their necks to catch a glimpse of their boss. “That’s the way a 21st century spaceship should land!”

The Dragon V2 has several fancy upgrades, including the world’s first 3-D-printed rocket engine and super-powered reverse thrusters that allow the V2 to shoot around space and land on Earth like Tony Stark in his Iron Man suit.

The reusable V2 will be able to land and ready to relaunch within hours, Musk said.

“This is extremely important for revolutionizing access to space,” Musk said. “So long as we continue to throw away rockets and spacecraft we will never have true access to space. It will always be incredibly expensive.”

The long-awaited Dragon V2 is an upgraded version of the Dragon delivery capsule that has been used to ship cargo to the International Space Station. SpaceX already has completed three deliveries to the space station as part of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to run 12 resupply missions through 2016.

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The Dragon is the only resupply ship that can return to Earth. Others simply burn up when they re-enter the atmosphere.

SpaceX’s successful round-trip missions to the space station make it the most likely candidate for transporting NASA’s astronauts.

The United States lost the ability for manned space travel when NASA retired its space shuttle program in 2011. American astronauts now have to catch rides on Russian rockets.

NASA has been subsidizing private space companies to build small, manned spacecraft that could taxi U.S. astronauts to the ISS without Russia’s help. SpaceX has received about a third of the $1.5 billion NASA has spent on commercial development projects.

Boeing and Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems also have received funding from NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, but those projects are years away from orbital tests, let alone manned flight. NASA’s own manned space program, the Space Launch System, has suffered ballooning costs and missed deadlines. Its first unmanned launch tests aren’t planned until 2017.

The Obama administration has pushed for greater reliance on the private sector to advance NASA’s goals. NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which helped SpaceX develop the Dragon V2, grew out of this idea.

“Let’s allow the private sector to get in so that they can, for example, send these low-Earth orbit vehicles into space ... while the government focuses on the big breakthroughs that require much larger investments and involve much greater risk,” President Barack Obama said in 2011.

SpaceX is poised to fill the low-Earth orbit role of shuttling astronauts to the ISS, but it is far from building a rocket the size of NASA’s Space Launch System, the space shuttle’s replacement program.

“It pretty much dwarfs anything on the commercial market,” said Cristina Chaplain, director of acquisition and sourcing management at the Government Accountability Office, which monitors the cost of space programs for Congress. “Maybe someday SpaceX will get there, but right now NASA’s on that path.”

Congress passed legislation in 2010 to appropriate funds to support NASA’s long-range space program, but cost and missed deadlines have placed the program on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list.

NASA is expected to test its massive rocket within the next three years. If that milestone is delayed, the program risks losing its funding, some analysts say, because the immediate need of getting astronauts to the ISS will most likely be met by SpaceX before other spacecraft even get off the ground.

The problem is that the Space Launch System program lacks a clear mission, according to Marco Caceres, director of space studies at the Teal Group Corp., a defense industry think tank.

“They’ve toyed with lassoing an asteroid and hauling it to the moon, or using it as a vehicle to take people back to the moon, but it’s not clear why” we’re funding SLS, Caceres said.

The political landscape may have changed, however, now that Russia has blocked sales of its Russian RD-180 rockets, which are used to launch U.S. defense satellites. Russia also has announced that it plans to end its operations on the ISS in 2020, effectively disabling the station.

“There’s a good chance that SLS will be developed and built, mainly because politically it just looks bad to not be developing your own national launch vehicle and we have to rely on Russia to launch our astronauts,” Caceres said.

In the near-term, uncertainty with Russia creates pressure to come up with an American-made vehicle to transport astronauts. This is good for SpaceX since “commercial companies may be our closest ticket to getting people to the space station,” Chaplain said.

SpaceX still has several regulatory hurdles it will have to jump before it can start booking seats on its Dragon V2. Any hiccups during the certification process could open SpaceX up to competition from NASA.

“If 2019 comes along and they still haven’t sent up an astronaut, then they will be competing against SLS,” the Teal Group’s Caceres said. “NASA is their biggest customer, but they could become their biggest competitor.”